Al-tok was growing
Small pieces of it were scattered throughout the city.
But most of Al-tok's focus was on a warehouse in queens
13 people tied to chairs were kept under guard by husks, from rafters above.
12 people controlled by one.
Al-tok had the one in control tied up front and center
Al-tok
'Predictably selfish...'
One appendage strolled up to the leader of the group
It wasn't something you could see, but though its husks Al-tok could sense it: the algera, emanating from the leader.
The leader was sweating, blood dripping down the side of his face.
Soon to be another husk
Robert Glass of the Tok pulled out the syringe.
The captured leader struggled
It would be a delight to have.
Moments passed, waiting for the serum to take effect.
The captive started jerking uncontrollably.
Al-tok stretched through his mind, broke it apart, and took control of the algera
And then Al-tok felt it slipping away
From that singular point of a new husk, Algera started to leak
Raw panic surged through Al-Tok...
Then calmness as it observed: the algera wasn't rushing out...
This was not a set back, this was a blessing!
Before Al-tok was filled to the brim, draining evenly from everywhere and now, empty...
Which let it follow the draining algera
The algera streamed in a thin vector through Al-tok, following along some well of attraction
That was leading right to the sink hole
It wasn't on Al-tok or attached, it was submerged within...
Al-tok removed it, inspecting it
spear{
heart:Global.reduce((combined,human)=>
combined+=human.heart
).filter(x=> x != Martha Crisp)
front:{
radius:1in
spikes:{
style:Barbed,
length:1ft,
Location:Front corner at {2xπ(this.front.radius)}},
damage{+∞},
piercing{+∞}
}
}
Al-tok was suspicious of its luck
Al-tok
'This is terribly convenient.'
This was either a trap, or this Martha was born yesterday.
Al-tok inspected it again, carefully, and found nothing hidden
Al-tok
'Thanks are in order.'
It didn't need all the algera, not with this
Al-tok took the spear for itself
A direct connection to every human heart
%%%%
The mirror prevented Rossin from joining Martha.
She felt a pickling on her skin as she was transported, mentally at least, to a strange world
Martha Crisp
'Not what I pictured.'
She stood under blue skies on a cliff, a ledge of red clay extending miles either direction, bowing in on itself, completing a circle so large she shouldn't be able to see it.
She could see the walls at the end though - despite the distance - as there was no ground in this circle save for one pillar in the center.
A pillar host to a Giant vibrant brown and green oak tree at the top, dominating the empty view.
And in front of her, a single rickety wooden bridge
It was swaying in a dusty breeze.
She stepped onto it
The bridge extending to a tiny point in the distance, and her sense of scale widened
In the distance a few planks came loose to a sudden gust
Martha Crisp
'Okay, wait a second.'
Martha could fly
She raised herself into the air
Martha Crisp
'I need to get used to that...'
['can you fly in the real world?']
Martha Crisp
"no... of course not..."
A part of her still wondered.
The wind picked up and Martha thought the bridge was swept away.
the landscape was otherwise featureless...
No, it was the wind moving her: flying against it was fine, it was just erratic
Martha Crisp
'Better than falling.'
Martha flew out towards the edge and looked down
She saw a nothing, a familiar nothing at the bottom
She moved back over land
Her heart racing, she tried to calm her breathing
Martha Crisp
'Why should you be worried, you can fly.'
Martha Roared into the chasm
A scream of defiance.
If she could yell at it, she could be calm at it, just as her...
Martha Crisp
'Thanks mom...'
She waited for an echo, and there was none.
She stared into that empty pit.
It was like an eye, and like an eye, it let no light escape.
Instead deconstructed, absorbed and processed...
It Looked, and by doing so, destroyed in the process.
So Martha resolved to fly over the bridge, using the side railings as a net
Martha Crisp
'If there is no weight on it, nothing falls.'
Martha flew over the bridge
She guessed it was a mile - but she couldn't get a read on distance.
She heard the echo of her roar finally reach back to her, surprisingly loud and deep.
As time marched on, her sense of scale of the thing changed.
No, it was closer to five miles away
She increased her speed greatly
What she mistook for a great oak tree in the distance grew into focus.
The trunk were actually the roofs of houses stacked vertically, she could see movement between them, like pulsating veins.
The tree WAS a city, or a city structured to look like a tree.
It towered above Martha as she approached
Martha landed on the edge of the pillar, just where the bridge met earth
And Martha felt gravity shift, then herself falling towards the city-tree.
She would have landed in a pool, had she not floated sideways away.
She could still fly, but now she just had a new 'down', which was now toward the trunk of the tree
She flew down.
The roar, now distorted echoed a fractal harmony of itself, echoed from the chasm walls
Martha had to cover her ears, from the rumbling.
Below the canopy of roofs the rumbling ceased.
Hidden under a false night, the streets were alive with activity.
Humans, street vendors, littered the middle with carts selling glowing lanterns.
None paid any mind to the echoing roar.
Music was in the air, a faint choir hum in the along with...
Martha saw the source of the noise, a band with a satyr playing a pan flute, with a choir of Sirin behind them.
There was some sort of parade - marching down the wooden streets - streamers flying everywhere
Martha Crisp
'What would be out of place here...'
Martha looked around.
The streetlamps flashed red
The sudden cries of children filled the streets and parents rushed them into houses, any houses
Someone tugged at her, and Martha resisted
The vendors shut their doors and went inside the houses.
Soon everyone was in their homes and Martha was alone in the silence and flickering red lights.
She heard a crashing in the distance
Martha Crisp
'That does not sound good...'
Martha flew down the streets, searching for anything.
Paper confetti and colorful flags lay disregarded at her feet.
What was she even looking for, she scanned the streets.
She stopped, listening
Silence, and a faint distant...
Something... she chased it, and it grew into a metallic grinding, then a rhythmic thrumming
Martha Crisp
'Music... is that punk rock?'
Another crash in the distance
All the houses around her started to hum...
Then they started to glow
The rumbling grow to a pitch of a thousand jet engines
Martha ducked into the center of the street
Hiding under a cart to try to escape the growing heat
The houses jettisoned away, flying off into the distant space
Walls of the chasm filled the sky, under the canopy she reoriented quickly.
In front of her she saw the sky, open and blue
Her echo vibrated the floor she was standing on
It filled the harmonic spectrum, a cacophony of increasing force.
Behind her Martha saw the pillar was being swallowed into the void
An edge of the pillar broke away, and fell into the void
She watched it for a moment, but realized quickly she shouldn't wait to see how long it took to fall into that darkness.
And around her was the deserted landscape of a urban suburbia with no buildings or people left, just placeholders, plots etched out in the sands of time
And punk rock playing to her right
She found it moments later, a record player, and wax disc
The ground shuddered and martha covered her ears from the echo, and another outside part of the pillar fell into the void
The part she entered from.
Taking the bridge with it
Martha Crisp
'I can still fly.'
She assured herself with a demonstration.
The gravity was still shifted towards the now empty city-tree
Martha Crisp
'First things first...'
Martha took the record and spun it on her finger
She was mildly surprised it worked, a pattern shifted and undulated out from the record as it spun
She grabbed hold of the record player, put the the record in, and carried it with her as she flew away
It felt like flying up, gravity never shifted as she flew out over the void.
It was much more manageable amount of panic looking at the void from the side than from below
Martha took a breath
Martha Crisp
"You can do this."
More of the pillar collapsed behind her from reverberating sound
Pieces fell into the void, below her from this perspective.
It looked like the cliff edge was drifting to her right.
With horror, she realize she was sinking to her left
She looked back
The city-tree was sinking, being sucked sideways into the void from her point of view.
Taking her with it, despite here flying away from it, it was still her ground.
And regardless of how far she flew, gravity kept pulling just as strongly
Martha Crisp
'Wait, gravity does not work like that.'
Martha adjusted her trajectory
Martha Crisp
'Fucking dream gravity...'
She was more than half way there but as the pillar sank lower: more of her velocity was fighting against being pulled in
She flew at full speed towards that cliff's edge
With the bridge posts, if she could just get there, she could use that as a anchor, a ledge to rest on.
She was flying now just a bit faster than the pillar was falling, but that gap was rapidly closing
She reached the cliff edge, and wrapped herself around the bridge pole
Martha Crisp
'Lets not do that again...'
Martha clung to that wooden post: fearing it would bend and fall in.
The gravity slowly shift as the pillar tumbled into the depths below...
Slowly converged the farther the pillar fell.
And soon she would be able to stand normally.
Though at a slight angle
Martha Crisp
'Not going to be here that long, just need to find the exit.'
Before that, though, Martha caught her breath, laying against the clay, wondering what had happened
Martha Crisp
'Maybe it was the bridge: transition point broke.'
She heard, then felt a rumble in the distance.
The nothing below was growing
Fault lines cracked, rushing through the dry red clay, surrounding her.
She jumped, then fell back down on her side
The pillar was still falling, faster than she could fly.
There was no obvious exit
She tried to crawl
And worse the gravity of the falling pillar made standing up nearly impossible.
Martha saw the earth riven at the cracks.
She heard and felt the rumble.
Her stomach dropped
The land mass she was on fell in, holding shape
Martha was still under the effects the of faster falling pillar's gravity, which lessened with each passing moment of her decent
She looked up
Above her the walls of the circle soon filled the sky, winking out the sun, plunging her in darkness
%%%%
Ada Lovelace of the Relux
'I think it is straight ahead.'
Ada reached Jochek at the bottom cellar: a long corridor of stone with a center arch.
Wooden doors barred in dark iron evenly placed on each side of the hall
Ada took the lead
Ada Lovelace of the Relux
'Quickly now, I know some things are down here because they should not be close to minds.'
Jochek of the Relux
'All these doors are locked.'
Ada looked above her and noted the security cameras
Lenny of the Relux
'No alarm yet, maybe no one to raise it, lets hope.'
Jochek inspected the doors
Jochek of the Relux
'Looks like they each have a number...'
Ada Lovelace of the Relux
'Look for negative one.'
Ada and jochek reached the end of the hall.
The door read zero
Lenny of the Relux
'Think it could be through there?'
Ada Lovelace of the Relux
'Keep looking.'
The wall to Ada's left was ascending numbers going back the way they came.
The other side...
We found it, first one on the right
Jochek kneeled in front of the lock
Lenny of the Relux
'Yeah, yeah - I am just around the...'
Lenny was coughing in his gas mask.
Carried under the arm of Dana.
Ada took Lenny's other side, he was old and frail in this body
The Relux
'And if that happens to impress upon you her helpfulness...'
Ada should spend time with Dana, we decided, she was the most discerning
Ada Lovelace of the Relux
'We are fine with three, three is a good number.'
Yet she complied, we knew she was cautious, but not completely jaded
Dana handed over the keys
Dana Ixari
"Any of these might open that."
Ada tossed them to jochek
Who despite having frail wrists at the moment, expertly caught the keys.
Jochek gave them a once over and started trying the relevant ones
Lenny of the Relux
'Right, now hurry up and wait.'
Lenny of the Relux
"Right, now hurry up and wait..."
Too often they defaulted to just their internal communication
Ada Lovelace of the Relux
"Once we get that open we high tail it out of here."
Jochek of the Relux
'None of the keys...'
Jochek went back to picking the lock
undefined of the Relux
'I do not like how there is only one exit, that distraction up there will only last so long...'
It was Ada that noticed the camera's red light blink
Ada Lovelace of the Relux
'I think we have a problem.'
Lenny covered the security camera with his jacket
Footsteps coming down the stairs grew louder in the distance
Ada ran over and slammed it shut
Things around her apparently awoke from the noise.
She heard snarling to her right, and that was quickly muted by what could be described as a tornado of chainsaws to her left.
Both sounds coming from behind locked doors
The doors along the hall started rattling, all of them
A discordant chorus of disquieting sounds